5 Tips for successful online dating

Not getting enough responses from your online dating matches? Try these tips and see what happens.

Joining an online dating site and creating a great profile are the first steps in the online dating process. You want to generate intrigue and appeal to get people interested enough to stop and look at your profile. But while these are important steps, how you use an online dating site once your profile is visible determines your success. That is, you want to be attracted to your matches and you want them to respond in kind to you.

So what happens next? How do you gain the most out of your online dating membership? What do you say in the first email? And what if you don’t get any emails or matches from people who you want to date?

Don’t panic. Most people have questions when they begin. In order for online dating to work in your favor and be a positive process, you have to put a little work and energy into it. You can’t expect to sit back and watch the emails and matches come rolling in. You have to engage and reach out. There are plenty of people to meet, so following are some tips for getting started:

Check in often. It’s good to have a routine so that you can check your online dating site every day for at least ten minutes. If you can only do it over lunch or late in the evening, then check in at those times. It doesn’t matter how long you’re logged in at any particular time, just that you check in often enough to send emails and chat with a few people on a daily basis. People move fast in the online dating world, so if you wait a week before checking in you’ve likely missed some good candidates (and your profile won’t show up as “active” unless you’re logging in regularly).

Send more than a dozen emails. Try three dozen emails. I know it seems impersonal, or laborious, but dating is a numbers game to a large extent. The wider you cast your net, the more people you’re able to correspond with and potentially date. It will be worth it – and it takes up less time and money than going to a bar and approaching women one by one.

Don’t send spam. Read profiles. Women can tell right away if you’ve sent the same email out to fifty other women. Mention something specific in her profile as a conversation starting point. You don’t have to make it a long email, but show that you took some time to read about her and that you’re interested.

Be classy in your approach. Most women don’t want to open an email addressed to “sex goddess” or “super hottie.” Again, you could have sent this to fifty other women. Plus, a woman wants to know that you actually want to meet her, not just any woman looking for a guy. Another tip: try to be emphatic in the beginning and pick something that stands out in her profile. (i.e. “Wow!! I love that you managed to sail halfway around the world when you were only 25, or “Gorgeous! Your photo stopped me – your eyes are stunningly beautiful.”) It’s not overkill, it’s effective.

Get over rejection. Everyone deals with it when they join online dating sites. Many people won’t respond to your emails. A smaller percentage end up in actual dates. It’s just a process – and let’s face it, nobody who is single has time to meet everyone they email or “wink” at on a dating website, so don’t feel rejected if some people don’t respond. Just move on to the next attractive person you see, and reach out.